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Instead of actually getting on with any proper research last night I got sidetracked into some genealogy database cleansing.

There are two issues with my family tree that had been bugging me for a while, they are individuals in my tree with incomplete names and individuals who are not related to me and my ancestors.

The first category contained 15 individuals, the majority (nine) with no surname (mostly wives whose maiden names have so far eluded me), five individuals had no name at all (mostly fathers of illegitimate children) and one individual with just a surname (the husband of a relation who married, where I know her married name but no other details about the marriage).

There are a number of ways I can tackle these, for instance the fathers of illegitimate children can probably be deleted for now if I have no information about them. None of them are my direct ancestors so I probably won’t be investing much (if any) time and money into finding them. So long as I make a note of the children’s names I can always add them back in at a later date.

The wives’ surnames will probably need researching because some of them are ancestors. That will mean birth or marriage certificates need ordering unless I can find the information elsewhere.

The second category of unlinked individuals contains 15 individuals, or more correctly three individuals, one family of seven and one of five. These are mostly people with the same surname as my ancestors and in the same parish as my ancestors, so probably related in some way. This also includes at least one grandchild living with (or visiting) grandparents in the census and whose parents are not yet clear.

I could remove these individuals until I know for certain how they fit in, but I think I will try and make an effort to find out how they fit in first. As a rule I don’t normally add individuals until I know how they are related, but these must have slipped through in the early days!

Chances are I am not going to be able to resolve all these problems straight away, but I still need to make sure that they are all captured on a to-do list and are all recorded in a standard format.